


43 Light-years from Earth

by Astrid_B_Caine



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Bodyswap, F/M, Fluff and Mush, M/M, Multi, Podfic Welcome, Short & Sweet, Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:56:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1806079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrid_B_Caine/pseuds/Astrid_B_Caine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Al is wishing upon a star. </p><p>Originally published in the fanzine: Quantum Instability 1, by Quantum Fire Press. 1993, under the pseudonym Astrid Boötes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	43 Light-years from Earth

## 43 light-years from Earth  
by Astrid Boötes 

_Written 1-1993_

 

He stood in the darkness, watching.

A spring breeze ruffled the curtains slightly. In the other room, the grandfather clock faithfully kept time, soothing with its familiar rhythm. Light from a sky full of stars shone in through the window, bathing the body in the bed with an unearthly glow... He was alone. 

No, not alone. Lonely. Tina was here with him, sleeping contentedly after a good bout of loving. And yet he felt so lonely he could burst. 

How could this be? Tina was wonderful to him, just wonderful! She was always in for a good laugh. Or a good-- Or sex. And of all the women he'd been with in his life, she had stayed with him the longest. Oh, they quarrelled, but they did always kiss and make up. Or rather the reverse. And she'd never pressed him to marry her. He guessed that was probably the reason they were still together. 

But now, he missed... what? 

No, he knew what he missed. It was the laughter of his best friend tickling his ears. His teasing getting his adrenaline going. His ranting in the middle of the night about some new theory of his. Damn it, he even missed the sound of Sam grinding his teeth when he'd fallen asleep on Al's couch again. 

He'd known all along that he'd miss Sam like he'd miss his right hand. And his left. And the rest of his body put together. He missed Sam like crazy.

Al silently crossed the room and sat down on the soft covers looking down at his well curved lover. And he wished it could be Sam.

But Sam was gone, or at least out of reach for him and he still had Tina. 

Sweet childlike Tina. _You never deserved to be second best,_ he thought at the sleeping figure. He stroked her soft curls, they seemed almost and odd shade of beige in the starlight.

As his gaze was drawn to the opening of the window again, another time of stargazing flooded back into his memory. He didn't want to remember it and tried to shy away from the images. But the night denied him safe forgetfulness and he walked to the window again, to search the skies. 

_Which one was it?_ Al tried to find the same spot. _In Ursa Major somewhere, a white star._

There it was, a bright sparkle. Al peered closely and called out to the almost too distant star. 

_Please Sam, make it back soon!_

Then he shut his eyes, against the moist that threatened to escape them and he leaned back against the frame of the open window, suddenly weak. He scolded himself for wasting his time making stupid wishes upon forgotten stars. 

_See what you do to me, Sam? Making me mushy. At my age!_

But no matter how hard his brain tried to convince him he should be, he couldn't make himself feel guilty or even embarrassed. All he knew was his desperate need for another human being. Who was as far beyond his reach as he would have been had he been dead. No, worse. If Sam had died, Al would at least have had time to mourn. The way things were, he was permitted neither.

But Al knew he preferred hell with Sam to heaven with anyone else. And that was the sad truth.

He was about to push himself up and roll into bed from sheer exhaustion, when he felt a familiar twitch. It wasn't really inside his body, nor was it outside it. But it was a feeling known to him since the first time Sam had started leaping, and he knew he'd be needed soon. 

Al reached for his pants, discarded earlier in a desperate haste and started to dress. Gooshie would be calling any minute and -

Suddenly the telephone gave a soft buzz and started to flash with a strong rhythm. 

_Told ya!_ Al thought to himself, pleased with the amount of alertness he still possessed at this hour of the morning. There even had been times that Sam had awoken him in his sleep this way, and Al had arrived at the project Control Room the very instant Gooshie was picking up the phone to tell him Sam had leaped.

He quickly pushed a few buttons on the colourful project phone beside the bed to acknowledge Gooshie's call and flung a neon coloured shirt across his shoulders. Unwilling to pay much attention to his state of undress at the moment, he left the buttons to be fastened for later and bent down by the bed to kiss Tina's white-yellow hair goodbye. He was vaguely sorry that she'd be waking up alone again, but his yearning for his friend outweighed every other emotion. In his haste he almost missed the soft groan emitted from the bed.

"Sorry, sweetie. Duty calls," he apologised softly, wondering whether she could read the real meaning behind the words when he said them.

"Muh?" was Tina's only reply. She stirred a little and seemed groggy from sleep. She rolled over toward the admiral and his hormones told him her lips were begging to be kissed. He complied and, his mind already on the leap ahead, he gave her his best Calavicci goodbye-kiss. 

She felt so good, he got caught up in it longer than he'd intended to and after a breathtaking minute he forced himself to let go. If not for Sam's sake then for the lack of oxygen flowing to his brain.

Tina let her arms go around his waist with a sigh and opened her eyes. 

"Al!" She seemed startled, as if surprised to find herself in Al's arms. Her grip tightened and locked. 

"I gotta go, cutie," Al tried to pry himself free. But Tina didn't let go, instead she looked around in dawning recognition of the space around her. 

For a moment he thought- Nah, couldn't be. And yet. 

The way her eyes were darting around the room until they had taken the surroundings in. And the way they now settled on his face, recognising the man who was holding her. It was!

"Sam?"

Sam sighed and Al too as his friend loosened the death grip he had on Al's torso. 

"Ohmigod," Sam whispered without much passion.

Al looked into the brown pools of Tina's eyes and saw his friend's greens. He felt the arms of his lover around him and saw them as Sam's. And the face, that shy smile, they were all Sam's.

His gaze settled on his friend's lips, hormones suddenly in overdrive, kicking and screaming from within, telling him what he had to do. It could be his only chance.

Then as absurdly logical as this whole situation was, the answer to his question earlier came to him.

"Tillitha," he breathed in Sam's face.

"What?" Sam seemed equally distraught and the tension between them was as thick as molasses. Yet neither could make the first move.

"It was Tillitha," Al clarified, "the star I wished on for you to, to come to me," he finished uncertainly, lost in the traveller's eyes.

"Tillitha in Ursa Major," Sam recited automatically, just as much lost in Al's, "a white star, 1.7 in magnitude," then his voice wandered off.

Al was being pulled down and with every millimetre that brought them closer the tension grew exponentially greater. 

"I wished for you too, Al," Sam breathed. "Every leap I make. Every star I see is Megrez."

Al forced himself to remove the last inklings of space between them and touched flesh upon glorious flesh. Suddenly passion took over all the energy between them and they were rolled around on the bed. Al didn't know who had moved first and certainly didn't care as he felt the entire frame of Sam's body pressed against his. They were only one step removed from the true merging of their two bodies. 

_With any luck,_ some impossibly sane part of Al's mind reasoned, _he'll be here long enough so we can take that last step. Together._


End file.
